ROH at UMBC 10/12/18

TKG: So I haven’t been to an ROH show since maybe Sinclair maybe earlier. But a couple guys at bar had gone to All In (my favorite story being asking Blue Meanie at Meet and Greet if he had any of his merch in XXL and him responding “Of course all I have is 2XL and up” and they were talking about going to ROH in Baltimore and a couple more guys were down for it, and I was like “sure”. We kind of got lost stumbling around UMBC for a while but got there a little way into the Jeff Cobb v ROH trainee match

Jeff Cobb vs. trainee

TKG: This was surprisingly back and forth. The trainee had a second who you expected was the manager who was going to eat a bunch of suplexes after match and didn’t. I was told that was trainee’s tag partner who was legit injured. Not sure why he was out there.

Briscoes vs. Beer City Bouncer/Bryan Milonas

TKG: Also thought this was going to be worked less evenly. Briscoes still have that kind of Sabu/Sandman aura of anything can happen. Mark did a kick through ropes, chairs were thrown in air, guys were thrown into guardrails and there was a tower suplex spot. But this was mostly really impressive showcase for Mark and Jay’s selling as they really made you believe in the Bouncer/Milonakas team and made you buy into idea that any moment all hell could break lose.

Marty Scurll vs. Hurricane

TKG: Last two matches had no real face/heel structure and then this one which was advertised on paper as hero v villain and they could have theoretically worked as Hurricane heel v Scurrl face but….Scurrll is super over with crowd and was going to get cheered for everything and any move done against him was going to be booed. First four minutes I thought they were going to go with a Hurricane heel v Scurll face dynamic with Helms working over Scurrl in a cloverleaf. But then it Scurrl just went to his stuff. Scurll was also a guy who had a real Sabu/Sandman what the fuck is he going to do feel when I first saw him on tape but here he was just a guy running through his stuff some heelish (match died whenever Scurll slapped on a hold), some faceish, some just there…till a shmozz finish. Post match, Hurricane’s mask is stolen and Helm’s makes sad-contemplative-and then-serious-Command Bolshoi-with-mask-off face.

Summe Sakai and____________vs. ____________&_____________

TKG: I think Sumie Sakai’s tag partner may have been an Adam Cole girlfriend, cousin or sister or just facially looked like Cole as audience yelled “Adam Cole Baby” whenever she hit a move. I think her belly ring may have snagged the woman who speared her which was kind of interesting but this felt like it went way too long. I went to find the Brothers Cooke during this and we talked wrestling and they’re both still hilarious. No intermission, I swear ROH used to have intermissions.

They do a backstage interview segment with Bubba Ray hosted by Caprice Coleman. Always liked Coleman, is he no longer wrestling? He kind of did more bug out eye selling off Ray’s mic work then necessary but fine interview segment.

Bully Ray vs. Jonathan Gresham

TKG: I had mostly seen early niche grappling Gresham and on way to show talked about this match not making any sense on paper. I’ve no memory of ever seeing Bubba work a mat exchange. But it ended up easily being my favorite match on show. Bubba comes out takes the mic and does less profane but more obese Joel Gertner mic work. He calls out audience talking about how there is no one with any athletic experience in the crowd, challenging people to fight him, mocked fans inability to hit him with streamers and talking about how proud he is of his New York heritage, mocks the Orioles does more about the greatness of New York, when Gresham comes out he points out that supposed fan favorite got no standing ovation and cheers (of course leading to crowd standing and cheering), don’t anyone say Tracy Sucks, don’t call me Paula, etc mic work and it was great. The women's match may have been face v heel but not sure, this was first one on show where it was really clear and Bubba doing essentially Dirty White Boy’s “I’m from New York” act but without any of DWB’s big brawling spots made for a really fun match. I have no idea how this will play out on tape but live this was the match of the night. Bubba brought a table in ring which got knocked over and forgotten for a big chunk of match, no one chants for wanting tables at this point and I was super looking forward to idea of match with table in ring where never gets used. Eventually set up and you get the PE in WCW, guy brings table in ring to eat a spot on table. But outside of that no real big bumping a couple chair shots , just match structure, selling and cool setting up of face offense and comebacks. Gresham with dropkicks, an octopus, sleeperhold and chair stuff was perfectly at home in this match too. Gresham not niche guy but well rounded in way wouldn’t be out of place working fired up babyface opposite no knee pads Budro.

Cody Rhodes/Team Macktion vs. So-Cal Uncensored

TKG: SCU started with some “I hate the locals “ mic work which was absurd to do after the Bubba match where entire match was built around I’m from New York City. Rhodes and Kazarian are apparently co-owners of a cigar company and both wear wearing shirts advertising it and they did a bit at beginning of match where they cut an insincere commercial shocked to see the other in matching shirt and talking about the cigar company they owned together. In the 90s I remember wrestlers telling me about how Jimmy Valiant was a genius because he understood the money in wrestling wasn’t in the gate but in the merch sales, and he wouldn’t want to work main events but instead the last match before the intermission to increase merch sales and would make sure to work a gimmick he was selling at his merch table into the match. He understood that better than anyone not named Vince Sr or Jr. With internet on demand sales, you don’t need to actually spend the time hawking wares at table and can work a semi main. The Gabe by way of Heyman booking is you work this spotfest multiperson match at end of show to send crowd home happy and enthusiastic. PE v Eliminators, Chilly Willy, Balls v Baldies, Smackdown Six, SAT v. XL/Devine Storm, Special K, Second City Saints v Generation Next, etc. This was that although worked in the semi-main. Christopher Daniels was kind of a known quantity in 2002, felt like a guy from a veteran of earlier generation as opposed to rest of ROH guys who were experimenting and trying to find themselves work out something new. Everyone felt like that here or maybe less like that and more like I was watching a solid workrate sprint between Riggs, Kidman, and Riggs v Riggs, Riggs, and Kidman. Both a throwback style and match that was less of a “HOLY SHIT I have never seen that before” and more like an AJPW old man wrestling match/or Russo era WWF where it was all built on pops for signature spots. It was interesting, nothing was missed that I noticed, Cody & Kazarian had more presence than I expected and fans left it happy. Some un-masked white guy named Savion came out with a belt and started filibustering about how he’s beaten everyone and deserves respect.

Jay Lethal vs. Silas Young

TKG: This was a fine title match with challenger coming out confident, champ takes control with wrestling, challenger responds to wrestling with putting up dukes and wanting fisticuffs instead, some ringside brawling, champ continues to control with wrestling, challenger keeps on threatening dukes, they do a I have a reversal of your reversal segment, than heel takes over for a big run, face champ tries finisher and build finish run. I dug this. The “reversal to reversal segment” never became as corny as those things can become. That’s a segment that normally goes about three minutes longer and it didn’t. Segment that often ends in a standoff restart and it didn’t do that either. It ended right where it should have with heel control. For a match where heel challenges fisticuffs, I never bought that it would happen. But this won the crowd back after the 6 man. Post-match Cody came out to challenge for the title and was interrupted by Kenny King who did the same speech as Savion about all the people he had beaten and how he was deserving of title. I haven’t seen King since maybe a Jeff Peterson memorial and he was really good at doing this bit and kind of stupid to have Savion who isn’t as good stumbling over the same talking points earlier on the show. Cody then did a Tommy Dreamer, Triple HHH, Ian Rotten post show state of the biz thanking fans for coming, “we do this all for you, and this company that means so much to us” speech. Cody was surprisingly endearing at that speech. He moves really well from smarmy to Eddie Marlin sincere and then back and then back again.

Overall fun show with both Bubba v Gresham and Lethal v Young being things I would be interested in revisiting.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 11/18/15 Review

1. Silas Young & Beer City Bruiser vs. War Machine

So now instead of overtly passionate men now we just get jokey segments with Young teaching the Boys about being men. It's all still clearly gay, I mean it is at a highway rest stop, but now it's getting too winky and hokey. This basically felt like Slick teaching Kamala how to bowl. But the match was real good so *shrug*. We get a lot of meaty bodies crashing into each other and War Machine actually felt like hosses instead of the usual hoss cosplay (hossplay?) that especially Hanson comes off as. I loved the early shoulderblock exchanges with Hanson eventually sending Bruiser flying, we got avalanches, cannonballs, big splashes, the kind of stuff you'd want. Rowe kinda whiffs on a superman punch but makes up for it later in the match. I dug Beer City Bruiser here, he really dumped himself on suplexes a couple times, hit a big frog splash, a wild cannonball off the apron into The Boys, and yeh this was good.

Steve Corino gets in the ring with Nigel wanting to reinstate him, but Corino talks about how 79 tours of Japan (but who's counting!) have left his body broken, and he needs serious neck surgery so will not be able to wrestle. He really should have thought about that before working so many non-ROH indies this year.

2. Michael Elgin vs. Kevin Lee Davidson

Booooooooo. Davidson is a big lumpy fat guy who I immediately get excited to see, and the match ends after one okayish clothesline. Elgin as HHH is tired.

3. The Addiction vs. The Kingdom

This match can kind of be summed up by one Daniels missed corner charge. Daniels threw Taven into the buckles, watched as Taven stopped himself by kicking his legs up and back. We see Daniels watching Taven, waiting for the right moment to run underneath him while not getting kicked in the face, because that's how the spot goes. So Daniels watches Taven kick up and over, runs towards the buckles and ducks WAY low to avoid Taven kicking him in the face, and then, when arriving into the turnbuckles, he stops and confusedly looks around, flabbergasted how he ended up chest first in the buckles instead of bumping dicks with Matt Taven, or whatever move he was pretending to do while just running towards the turnbuckles. Dur durdur where did he go General Daniels?? You threw him into the buckles, but when you arrived in the buckles seconds later, he was gone! Look around some more, did he sneak past the ring pole? You watched him not hit the buckles, you ducked really low to run underneath his body, but then his body was not in front of you! That body that you just ran underneath!

We got all four guys realllllly showing off their comedy chops in this one. It was terrible. Tons of yuks. Daniels looked so bad. The guy telegraphs everything to an insane degree. We got a dive train spot where nobody knew how to catch anybody else. Ref bump. Comedy spots. Contrived double teams. A real triple threat!

And to think, I won't even get the privilege of watching this on television in a couple weeks.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 11/4/15 Review

I skipped a couple weeks as the product wasn't doing much for me and I found my brain wandering something fierce during the last couple episodes. One episode I even nodded off during! When I nod off and wake up in the middle of a Michael Elgin match my reaction will likely never be "I better rewind this Michael Elgin match". So really the only thing I remember about the last couple weeks of TV is Rachel saying that Veda Scott always appears to look uncomfortable wearing her short dresses. Like she doesn't quite know how to best move in a small dress. She also thought Maria - in her tight dress and strappy heels - looked like Jersey trash's idea of dressing up. I told her I didn't think Maria was from New Jersey and Rachel assumed she might just be cosplaying as Jersey nightlife. This seems accurate.

I had no idea O'Reilly was Canadian until he dropped several "SO-rees" in his opening interview. "Adam Cole, you're gonna be real SO-ree."

1. Silas Young & The Beer City Bruiser vs. The Young Bucks

So Silas Young made The Boys look and dress more like what HE feels men should look like, so now they look like damp Seattle street rent boys. I appreciate that Silas is at least trying to capture a specific region with his desires, molding them into the type of boys he'd like to pick up. "Yeah, put on these scoop neck ribbed tanks, lemme wet you down a bit....tear those jeans around the thighs.....yeah, now you look like men." This part of the match was fun. Bucks looked good, Young and Bruiser were fine. This whole things was mostly a Bucks double team show, with, yes, a lot of superkicks. Their superkick is a real nice cutoff spot, which is mostly what they use it as. Young has a bunch of silly offense that doesn't fit his supposed character, but you knew that. He did plant a Buck with a nice Finlay roll, but then went into some dorky headstand on the buckles that thankfully saw him get superkicked. Matt throws a nice back elbow, Bruiser takes a nice back bump to the floor, and yeah this was good enough. And it leads tooooooo

2. Young Bucks vs. The Boys

Young and Bruiser bailed and made The Boys finish the match, and Boys are working a kind of enhanced Mikey Whipwreck of guys who don't actually have offense (even though they can't help themselves and still do some indyish offense). The match is basically them being whipping boys for more Bucks flying. One of the Boys gets a silly double rana, meaning he did a rana simultaneously on both Bucks, but that was it, Bucks took over and hit More Bang for Your Buck on both men stacked on top of each other. The fact Dalton Castle has not ONCE come out on TV fighting for his boys, or even confronting Young, is ridiculous. Really feels like a WWE move where Castle got over too much so they had to knock him down a few pegs. Out of all the things they could have done with the Boys angle, this is just about the blandest. It's still dripping with Silas Young's blatant and out-without-ever-officially-coming-out homosexuality, but it's missing the passion. And you need the passion.

3. Will Ferrara vs. Roderick Strong

Extended Strong squash and he looked good. Ferrara was either really good at putting over submissions, or just actually hurt while in Strong's submissions. Strong had nasty chops, a couple great leaping knees, and worked some nice fast sequences with the smaller Ferrara, and also hit a mammoth dropkick and a big stomp to the face (one of which gave Ferrara a nice welt on his forehead). But this was all about the couple subs he locked on: His camel clutch into a cravate was super painful looking, with him locking his knuckles under Ferrara's jaw and really wrenching that jaw to the left. After he dropped the cravate he was holding just a basic chinlock but even that looked like his ulna was hooked right under Ferrara's throat. It did not look like a casual chinlock. Match ends with him locking on a standing Boston crab while standing on the side of Ferrara's face, with Ferrara screaming. I love when Strong works like a total badass like this.

4. Adam Cole vs. Kyle O'Reilly vs. AJ Styles

Well this was predictably messy and disjointed. Long periods of guys selling, because 3 way, match based on breaking up stuff rather than beating down stuff, silly 3 way submission spot, blecch. O'Reilly isn't very good and his armbar is done so much that it's impossible to take it too seriously. It's not approaching levels of the Angle Lock, but it's now a move he goes to several times in a match that rarely goes anywhere. Everything here felt really rushed, with the only actual inspired moments coming in the last couple minutes: Styles and O'Reilly had a cool little strike exchange with both guys tossing out elbows and kicks at weird angles, not just forearm tradeoffs. You had kicks to the spleen followed by slaps followed by elbows with neither man waiting for the other to time it just both guys winging them out there. The O'Reilly caught a Styles strike and dropped into a triangle. Styles tries to fight out and deadlifts O'Reilly, and then gets him into position for a Styles Clash while still stuck in the triangle. That's an awesome visual. Cole hits a superkick to the back of Styles head which sorta drops O'Reilly with the Styles Clash (and could have been a really dangerous fall for Styles since the triangle was still on), and then Cole hits the unnecessarily goofy brainbuster on his own knee for the win. Normal brainbusters look better. That own knee nonsense is just silly. So, that hot final 90 seconds or so was a hoot, but the rest was triple threat garbage.


Still overall this was a better episode than we've been getting, so maybe I'll get back on the bus. We did have a lot of Mark Briscoe commentary, and who could hate that?

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 10/14/15 Review

1. ACH vs. Matt Sydal

This was awesome. Great fun. It was super spotty, but when all your spots work and they all look awesome, then shiiiiiiiit I can get into that. ACH starts with some fun wrist work and it does effect the rest of the match as from here Sydal switches to knees and kicks, and all of his knees and kicks looked gooood. ACH is freakishly athletic and can land in all sorts of crazy ways, really leaning into Sydal's baseball slide and going sprawling into the barrier. Sydal is no stranger to big bumps himself and both guys really bust out all the spots they know, ACH nails some nasty elbows, lands the punt on the apron (as well as an awesome rope running punt later to boot Sydal off the top), and ACH's screaming fast Fosbury Flop dive is just gorgeous. Both guys fly into the others knees on missed flying moves, ACH dumps himself on a reverse rana, and this was just tons of fun. Not much story to speak of, but when both guys have cool offense you can work a good "one-upper" type of show me match. Awesome stuff.

The Addiction and All Night Express have a spirited mic showdown, but neither team says much of anything. They speak in catchphrases, they don't stumble over words, they speak loudly and pointedly annunciate specific words in sentences, but they don't say anything. "Belts are still ours!" "ANX does it all night long!" There's a recap. Watching it took much longer.

2. Beer City Bruiser/Silas Young vs. The Boys

So apparently Silas won The Boys. This already feels like a major disappointment. Dalton wasn't out here causing a ruckus? This angle got way less gay and way more uninteresting way too fast. This match was fun though. Beer City Bruiser is an egg-shaped old Harley trainee, hits a nice elbow and a powerful dropkick, dumps one of the Boys with a nasty suplex. Another boy takes a nasty lariat from Silas. Short little squash, but good. I wish the Bruiser was on TV more. But man this is just so predictable and frustrating. Silas vs. Dalton with Silas himself volunteering to take the Boys, the simmering homosexual lust, all of it wasted. Castle not even running out fighting for his Boys is just unexcusable. Also, instead of a Tale of the Tape at one point there should have been a graphic with Silas Young looking into an ornate mirror, with Dalton Castle being reflected back. It would have been perfect. Dalton Castle, the man Silas Young is refusing to accept as his real identity, just staring back at him. If it was reflected in a truck stop men's room mirror it would have been even better. I'm so bummed they messed this all up. They could have easily just ripped off the Beecher/Chris Keller storyline.

3. Watanabe vs. Jay Lethal

Well, this was better than I expected it would be. I was expecting it to be terrible, but, tiny victories. Jay Lethal is just bad. He has terrible flimsy blowjob offense, offense that would be terrible if he were a babyface, except he's this awful HHH "have my title match masterpiece" performer now and so he wedges all this lousy blowjob offense into these awful touring champ main events. He does the 3 topes (which has now become a totally played out move. It's the Roll the Dice of 2015 indies) and the Lethal Injection is hands down the worst finisher in wrestling. Watanabe was fine here, liked his big suplex comeback, liked his senton, liked how he sold his back going into the barrier off the topes. Hated Lethal. So tired of Lethal main event epics.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 9/23/15 Review

1. Silas Young vs. Michael Elgin

Elgin hasn't been on TV in awhile so he goes over pretty strong on Silas here, but Silas is more of a regular so might have been nice to give him more. Although when he did get more his stuff looked kind of weak, including an incredibly goofy slingshot double foot stomp...thing, that doesn't really look like it touches Elgin. But Young at least takes Elgin's stuff nicely, especially a massive powerbomb on the floor into the guardrail. Kevin Kelly was doing his horrible style of announcing, where he doesn't so much do play-by-play as he does just yell out random nouns that he sees. When Young went for a backbreaker on Elgin, Kelly just yelled "Surgically repaired KNEE of SILAS!" Not anything about the backbreaker, just decided to point out Young's knee, which had nothing to do with any part of the match. It's like he spends 80% of the match looking elsewhere, and then occasionally looks up and points out the first object he notices. Maybe it's some sort of creative writing thought exercise? Needed more underlying homosexual shame and rage, like the other Silas Young matches.

2. Caprice Coleman vs. ACH

Well this didn't do a whole lot for me. All thigh slaps all the time. Just a buncha slappy sounds with legs extended in kick like motions. Legs not touching opponent's bodies, but slappy sounds happening anyway. If a superkick missed in Philadelphia, would it still make a slapping sound? Always. Always.

3. RPG Vice & Kazuchika Okada vs. Hirooki Goto & Briscoe Bros.

This started out not very good, and by the end I was on board. Jay started with Okada and it's not shocking that Okada had bad looking strikes, but Jay looked like he was holding waaaaay back. No clue what was going on here because a few minutes later he's beating the hell out of Trent. Maybe Jay was just being a slow starter, because by the end he's tossing out headbutts and big lariats and looking like a monster. But if this match works, and eventually it does, it's because Mark was absolutely on fire throughout the entirety of this. I couldn't take my eyes off that crazy caveman. Yeah Trent can take a big bump and Goto threw a nice spinning heel kick in the corner, but this was the Mark Brisco show. All of Mark's palm strikes looked great, he flung himself into offense, all his combos looked cool while also looking like he was just making them up as he went. He looked awesome, one of my favorite Mark performances. And after Jay's stumble early with Okada, he went out on a wild note just killing Baretta. Briscoes make everything better.


This week's show went by quick, even if looking back I didn't love a lot about it. That's...good, right? All worth it for Mark Briscoe.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 8/19 & 8/26/15 Review

1. Silas Young vs. Dalton Castle

Awesome little TV match, one of my very favorites since I started watching their weekly TV. Castle jumps him at the bell with headbutts and punches and it's clear right away these two just work real well together. Castle bumps big taking an awesome Jerry bump that didn't feel set up from a mile away, really felt integrated into the match nicely. He also bumps big into the railing and later takes a great tumble over the top, tackling Young. Young actually works more like an asshole here, as opposed to working like Chris Sabin...which I suppose is just working like a different kind of asshole. More backrakes, less flips. Both men move really well in there and everything was laid out great, nice build and logical progression. One of the eunuchs takes a big bump, and postmatch Young wants a stip added to a future match where HE gets possession of the eunuchs if he wins. I love it. Castle kept taunting him with flamboyance and it drives Young mad with seething passion. Him demanding the eunuchs is so obvious. He's accepting a dare that nobody at all was daring him to do. "Okay guys, FINE, I'll take the eunuchs." It's like Lindsey Graham saying he'd spend a night in a rest stop men's room if he wins any primaries. Nobody else is asking him to do it, clearly just a guy offering to do it. Silas Young's character makes so much more sense if you think of him as a closeted gay man.

2. Will Ferrara vs. Moose

They do the tale of the tape and Kevin Kelly actually says "No mention of heart, though". Ugh. This is the best I've seen Moose look, so this accomplished what it set out to do. He's still kinda sloppy and still seems lost, but the offense he chose to do worked, and he did neat things like take a spike tornado DDT on the floor. Plus the all white gear looked brilliant.

2. Young Bucks vs. RPG Vice

***NOTE: I'm not sure what happened to my write-up of this match. It got gone. It once was, but no longer is. Long story short, did not love it. Rocky Romero is horrible. Romero working schtick is unbearable. Bucks had a couple nice cut off moments, notably cutting off Trent during his apron ass hattery. Match went too long, Bucks weren't as violent and twerpish as they can be.

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1. Bloodbound Warriors (Grey Wolf & Red Scorpion) vs. Briscoes

Never seen Bloodbound Warriors before, but they appear to be shortish God of War or Warhammer cosplayers, and they've clearly committed to it and instead of making gay-intensive Vines they've focused it into pro wrestling. GREY Wolf is covered almost entirely in RED body paint, which is confusing. He's also not very good. Mainly he staggers around selling for Jay, so it's not like he got to do a whole lot, but his staggering wasn't very good. Scorpion has a big HGH belly and was much better. He had a couple nice press slams and I like a good press slam. Mark took a head first press slam over the top off the apron, takes a wild bump into the railing, and later got flipped over the buckles to the floor. Mark was a maniac in this. Jay hits a wild tope on Wolf, both guys kick the hell out of Scorpion (with Mark hitting a huge pump elbow off the top and Scorpion getting dumped on the back of his head with a clothesline). This was really fun. I'd actually like to see BW back, just because they seem a bit different from some of the ultra super serious workers we usually see.

2. Donovan Dijak vs. Roderick Strong

This worked! Checking my pre-match predictions, and yep, I was in the "this won't work" camp. But it worked. Dijak has a ways to go, his "reeling" especially looks horrible. And since this match had plenty of strike exchanges it also had plenty of him reeling and just...looking stupid while waiting to be hit. He can break out some impressive fast sequences (his 360 pump kick looked killer) but doesn't have any of the little things yet. He could get there. Roddy has had a great year and looked good here. He smartly built the match up to some good nearfalls that tricked me. Truth actually had some of the only good stuff I've seen from him. There was a really nicely timed spot where Roddy jumps over potential Truth interference while on the apron, and then Dijak belts him. The timing in this was spot-on throughout. Really solid stuff. Dijak just needs to figure out what the hell to do with his body and face while waiting to be hit.

3. Future Shock (Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly) vs. Addiction

Frankie Kazarian's vest is ridiculous. It's trying soooooooooo HARD you guys. It's like he went into Spencer's Gifts and bought every single patch they had, then ironed them onto his vest in a super organized fashion. They run the full gamut of "bands who are well known enough to sell patches at the mall", so he's got the Rolling Stones on his shoulder and The Beatles on his back and Led Zeppelin on his side. Hey, man. I'm a man. A man with a vest. I am definitely a man who has patches of bands that every human listens to. So many inches of vest are filled up with these personality-free patches, all of them placed on the vest as properly as possible. It is truly a vest that was workshopped by moms. It might as well be one of my mom's old appliqué holiday vests, like the Christmas one with felt gingerbread men and candy canes. It's that awful. Except my mom loved her holiday vests. She had all of autumn and winter covered: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They spoke to her personality and she would still be wearing them today if that damn Stacy and Clinton didn't constantly put them down on What Not to Wear. They've ruined the vests for her. Frankie Kazarian's vest tells me nothing about him, except that he has zero personal taste of his own. His vest looks like it was decorated by a 45 year old man who is in charge of decorating teen bedrooms on sitcoms. "Looks like that back wall could use another rock & roll poster, Gary."

And the announcer calls The Addiction the "World Tag Team Champions of the World". Why is this a thing? I'm pretty sure Corino called them this a couple weeks ago. The Ring of Honor Pro Wrestling Champions of the World of Ring of Honor Pro Wrestling.

And this match bleeeeeewwwwwww. For a guy who is known for his cold, bland, robotic execution, Daniels sure does execute a lot of things horribly. He's like one of those replicants from the show Humans who is at the end of his shelf life, so the muscle memory is there, he's just really horrible at doing all of his programmed commands and sometimes ends up lost in the forest, his A.I. caught on a low hanging branch. Here we get really awful thigh slaps, overshot moonsaults, clunkily moving into position for offense, all really bad. He did a slow tortured walk to try and catch O'Reilly on the ropes that was the just the worst community theater Frankenstein's Monster walk you've seen. At one point Cole/O'Reilly do a shitty legsweep/clothesline combo on Daniels and no physical connection is made by anybody. So you have three bodies all moving to their own beat, with Cole whiffing a legsweep, O'Reilly whiffing a clothesline and Daniels back bumping to nothing. If one segment could tell the story of the match.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 7/29/15 Review

So last week was a real dud of an episode. Let's hope for a wee bit better show this week? I already had a laptop blow up, fiscal year end kicked my butt, and I need a good show here.

1. The Kingdom (Mike Bennett & Matt Taven) vs. Corey Hollis & Jonathan Gresham

This was a decent enough extended squash, got over the Kingdom as it intended. Gresham took some nice bumps into the railing, and man is he tiny. I kind of hate how Hollis bumps. I had never seen him before. I'm okay with that. We go through a long awful stretch where Bennett is repeatedly duped by Gresham essentially running back and forth in the ring. Taven on one side, Bennett on the other, Gresham running between them and getting grabbed by Taven, then slipping out with Bennett chasing him back and forth. It looked terrible, just an awful run of cat and mouse. They did it so much it looked like the moment when you noticed HHH set up every single one of his moves with an Irish whip. But, that was just the middle. It was fine. Not fine to the literal dictionary definition; but fine, as it's most commonly used. Which is to say, it was okay.

Destination America regularly pushes a show called "Killing Bigfoot" which...I gotta say I do not understand. Destination America has (no less than) 9 shows dedicated to Bigfoot. A cursory check of some well known science journals confirms that as of this writing we have still discovered zero Bigfoots. But apparently there is an entire show dedicated to killing a Bigfoot. I am looking forward to watching other Destination America programs like "Sanding Down Unicorn Horns" or "Shitting Down the Long Neck of Loch Ness".

2. Caprice Coleman vs. Brutal Bob Evans vs. Silas Young vs. Cheeseburger vs. Moose vs. Dalton Castle

God hearing Kevin Kelly try to explain Silas Young's gimmick is the worst. "He's in a baaaad mood...and...he's angry...and he thinks people like Dalton Castle are what's WRONG with society." Really? That's what you got? This wasn't that good, but really who was expecting it to be with these participants. I liked some of Castle's cut off spots. Coleman had some nice moments like a weird little moonsault to the floor that Bob and Cheeseburger whiffed on catching. Moose is one of those guys like Uhaa Nation who is a large impressive black man who has improbably soft offense. His little flipping spear looks so super gentle (and really to use that as the finish directly after Mike Bennett used his spear to set up the finish, come on). Highlight was pretty easily Castle hitting his hardway German on Moose, really slooooowly lifting him up and over. Really impressive spot. Cheeseburger continued his run of terrible by being way late for a pinfall break-up, so Sinclair had to stop the count for no reason before the 3. Evans had his feet on the ropes, but Cheeseburger was clearly supposed to break up the pin. He was way late, Sinclair just stopped counting the pin. And it was immediately before the finish. Tough spot for Sinclair to be in, and after he tried pretending like he had seen Evans' feet on the ropes, but he clearly stopped while still looking down. Yuck.

Corino and Kelly are so bad during these Whitmer segments. I don't know what they think they're going for when they do reactions shots, but they're failing. Kelly is sub-Tenay when it comes to expressing realistic outrage, and Corino does some sort of weird fake cry/trying not to laugh face.

3. ACH vs. Bobby Fish

Hey this was fun, and pretty easily the best match on a show with zero competition for that title. ACH's apron kick looked great and his handspring moonsault was crazy, also liked a couple of his kicks to Fish's calf. End got a little sloppy with kicks landing when they were supposed to miss and then subsequently not sold because they were supposed to miss, and things getting overall way too cooperative. But, I like Fish and ACH has some fun athletic spots, and for a short little TV match this was much more of what I was hoping for.

Better show than last week, but it would have to be historically bad for that to not be the case.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 7/15/15 Review

1. Adam Page vs. Matt Sydal

This match happened, some stuff was good, other stuff was not good. Starting to think Adam Page is not very good. BUT his shooting star "shoulder block" off the ring apron always makes me laugh. It's just so stupid and impossibly indy. It makes next to no contact, looks really dangerous, would be confusing to explain what was happening to a non-wrestling fan, it just checks off all the boxes of hilarity. There was a real nice moment where Sydal hits a huge baseball slide dropkick that accidentally takes out Colby Corino. Colby really leans into it and takes a big bump off it. Steve Corino was horrible (but also unintentionally hilarious) on commentary, saying really forced things like "My son! My son was sacrificed for the benefit of Adam Page!" Just...the worst read. This whole match just left me a little flat. I liked things both guys did (although the more I see him the more I think Sydal peaked during his '09 Superstars/ECW run), liked Page's pumphandle fallaway slam with a bridge, liked a Sydal spinning back kick, and really loved the baseball slide I mentioned, liked Page's slingshot flipping lariat (Page is really a guy who does a lot of stuff, some of it even good!) that Sydal flew into. It just didn't add up to anything for me. Each guy did things until it was time for the match to finish. There was no actual flow, just a series of moves in a bubble.

Veda Scott is a marginally more attractive Chelsea Peretti. Maybe slightly more than marginally. Marginally x2. She's pretty. But Chelsea Peretti would clearly be better at riling up a wrestling crowd.

2. Silas Young vs. Will Ferrara

Ah Silas Young. The man who looks like James Gammon yet wrestles like Chris Sabin. And for a 5 minute Velocity match this was pretty fun. It had a played out finish, with Dalton Castle's eunuchs distracting Young leading to Ferrara's roll up victory; but the match had tons of cool stuff, like Ferrara's cool armdrags including a real nice one into a short arm scissor. Then Young did the awesome Backlund lift all the way over to get out of the scissor. Ferrara took a big DDT and planted vertically. Young worked some nice headlocks where he would refuse to get pushed off. I love stuff like that. This was probably the most interesting I've ever seen Young look, so maybe his work is catching up to his mustache? We'll see, but I liked what I saw from both guys here.

3. Mark Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal

Wow, Jay Lethal is a really really boring wrestler. He just really does not do anything for me. His control segments were so bland here, and while he made Mark's offense look good, Mark has offense that's really easy to make look good, and Lethal never made it mean anything. Briscoe looked great, all his stuff was on. He made Lethal's shots actually look like they had something behind them (which, ehhhh), but I love all of Mark's offense. He throws some really great elbow drop variations, nice big boot, amusing uppercut strikes, etc. The match turns pretty messy when Lethal's untalented goons get involved, and then ODB comes out, and then Jay comes out to make things actually interesting. I defy anybody to come up with a stupider finisher than Lethal's handstand into a diamond cutter. I mean come on. How can anybody take that seriously. A finisher that requires the recipient to wander independently into the middle of the ring, wait in position while the gymnastics takes place, and then just take a move that looks far less devastating than if he had just done a diamond cutter without a dorky handstand. I cannot see any argument for that move being improved by adding that handstand. It feels like Lethal is trying to work more "serious", like he's a touring NWA champ. But it really isn't a style that suits him, and it's not one that he's capable of pulling off.

I had been excited for the main this week, but Briscoe just couldn't lift it up to his level. Ferrara/Young was a pleasant little surprise, though. This episode was filled with guys executing things nicely. But move execution doesn't mean a whole lot to me when it goes nowhere.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/3/15 Review

I'm happy to have more wrestling on my TV. Maybe I'm a luddite - well, I definitely am - but getting to watch something on my large HD TV screen will always win out over watching that same thing on my laptop. I've been mostly out of the ROH loop for the last year or two - there are no Sinclair stations in my area - so let's dive back in and watch, shall we?

I know these aren't filmed exclusively for DA, but it would be cool if this brings them any amount of new fans. And I can't imagine a better introduction to new fans than seeing the hate-filled scowl of Jay Briscoe and caveman insanity of Mark. I love Briscoe promos.

1. Will Ferrara vs. KUSHIDA

I had not seen Ferrara before, and that was probably a good thing. Will Ferrara was definitely a current day indie wrestler. Went through all the motions and movements of a wrestler, no substance whatsoever. There's this certain way a lot of newish indie workers move, this puffed chest/butt out style of movement, and he's got that down pat. He wimps out of his clothesline follow through and seems scared to hit people with his dropkick, but he knows chest puff/butt out style. KUSHIDA has popped up lately on the Friday NJPW show, and he's okay but also has a lot of weenie strikes. His springboard head graze is apparently a signature spot of his (I thought he was working a parody highflyer gimmick against Ricochet), and he throws these real lousy not punches/not forearms where he just kinda hits Ferrara's forehead with his wrist. Imagine the worst version of the way Robert Gibson would throw punches off a hot tag. Ferrara hits an impressive suicide dive tornado DDT but it doesn't really go anywhere. I do love the hoverboard lock as a finisher, looks nasty and Ferrara only briefly held on before wisely tapping. So I liked that, but a lot of this was....not much.

2. Silas Young vs. Watanabe

Young's "Last Real Man" persona rings a little hollow with me as I'm always just left wishing he was more of an asskicker. He's got a great 'stache, and a good mug, but doesn't really work stiff and really, just kind of scowls. It needs some work. Watanabe is a pretty low end NJPW guy who throws poor elbow strikes and sells moves by making exaggerated Eddie Murphy-as-Buckwheat faces. Young kicks him in the ear and Watanabe perks his head up, widens his eyes and purses his lips. Maybe it's more of a Church Lady reaction. He does it three different times here. Young takes a couple nice bumps here, bouncing off the apron after a clothesline and flipping over off a suplex on the floor, but Watanabe isn't very good and Young seems like he needs an actual asskicker in there with him to bring out his best.

3. Moose vs. Colby Corino

I'm a fan of a good squash and Corino manned into some stuff admirably here. Corino is scrawny enough that I cringed whenever he would get tossed around. He takes a big time bump into the guardrail, takes a powerbomb on the apron and one on the floor. I dig squashes in wrestling, especially on an ROH card so we don't just see 8 straight matches of do-si-do mirror sequences.

4. Donovan Dijak & J. Diesel vs. The Briscoes

This was a nice extended squash. Diesel works an amusing golden gloves boxing gimmick, Dijak is a guy with some height and not much else. I love all of Mark's strikes and his dropkicks are some of the best in wrestling. Jay is maybe the most intense dude in wrestling today, his scowls are downright mean. I wish I could have seen them work WAR. I love Briscoe matches when they just start going on a rampage, they both know how to ramp things up so damn well.


This was kind of a weird episode to debut to a wider audience. I know they just opted to show the Sinclair episode that already aired this week (which makes sense) but this was not a good episode in the least for new eyeballs. The homegrown guys looked like duds, and the two matches they pushed from the very beginning of the show didn't end up actually happening, which might look odd to new eyes. Not that anybody would have likely been clamoring for BJ Whitmer in a singles match, but it's strange to start a show advertising just two matches, and keep advertising them throughout the show, and then do a bait and switch on both of them. At least the Briscoes were featured, who are no doubt the best guys in the fed, so at least they had that on their side. Still, you have to assume somebody somewhere was seeing this for the first time. And that person just got to watch Will Ferrara.

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2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

15. Eddie Kingston v. Silas Young AAW 3/21

PAS: Big match Eddie Kingston is still definitely an awesome thing. This is the kind of nasty fist fight wrestling he excels at and I love. They have an awesome set up video for this match establishing how Kingston attacked Young's wife when he was a heel, Young won the feud, Kingston came back to AAW as a babyface and Young turned heel on the fans because they were cheering him. Such a cool angle, the classic wrestling trope has everyone ignore the sins of a guy when he turns, I loved that Young couldn't do that. Kingston also cuts one of his greatest promos ever before the match talking about taking Zoloft to stay centered and how he worries about getting shot every time he walks out of his house. Match itself was really violent, but not from weapons shots, or even stereotypical stiff wrestling, but just every blow seemingly landed with a little bit extra thud and hate. Kingston torches his ribs on a guardrail early and spends a lot of the match selling shortness of breath and rib pain. Young seethes the entire time, he does a great job of conveying distaste and hate. Only really quibble was them setting up a avalanche Finlay roll as a huge spot for Young, and Kingston coming back to win pretty soon after, felt a little abrupt, otherwise this was right up there with the best stuff in the world. Its actually good enough to make me go watch the previous months Davey Richards title defense.

ER: I knew nothing about their feud before watching the pre-match video, and after just 3 minutes of video I was pumped for this match like I've been for few this year. Kingston is my favorite promo in wrestling ("You think I could work a 9 to 5 job!?"), and I liked Young's heel turn, yelling at the crowd for cheering a guy like Kingston. Young was pissed and Kingston is a guy who seems to thrive on people being pissed at him. As Phil said, big match Eddie Kingston is an awesome thing. Now, a couple complaints: Young cuts this mean promo beforehand, rightfully pissed at Kingston and rightfully pissed at the fans for still cheering him. It's a good turn that made a lot of sense. And so we cut straight from that to Young making his entrance to "Don't Stop Believing", even waiting for the drums to hit before coming out from the curtain. This is just pure eyerolling idiocy. You can't change your theme music? You can't come out to NO music? Or any other music? Your wife was injured by Kingston, you turned your back on the fans for still supporting Kingston, but you still come out to years-beyond played out, drunk sorority girl scream bait? Completely absurd. Is the song that important to your character of "The Last Real Man"? Is it so important, that after your wife was left injured, and the fans turned on you, you still thought "I'm coming out to MYYYY Journey song, and I'm going to sit behind the curtain until Steve Perry's first vocal break!" It honestly makes me mad just thinking about it. It seems SO OBVIOUS to not do ANY of this, but there it is. My other, second complaint, is that he didn't really seem to work the match any differently than any other Young matches I've seen. There were a couple of moments, one good one in particular, that tied into his angry promo, but other than that was just normal Silas Young. Also, the announcing was noticeably horrible for this match. Yeah, yeah, complaints about indy wrestling commentary. But for a match clearly positioned as a serious grudge, it was just so bad, and it was mostly from the guy whose voice I didn't recognize. Even beyond the usual horrible "shades of" calls (just yelling out Kobashiiiiiii during a series of chops) he kept trying to shoehorn in a horrible "SAVE ME JEBUS" gag throughout and just...no. I'm sure there's a time and place for yelling the same 15 yr old Simpsons reference numerous times, but out of all the matches on the card to do it...man it was just so bad.

Anyway...

So THANKFULLY Young was against Eddie Kingston here, who knows how to have a hateful brawl. Kingston knew what it took to make this seem like a blood feud and Silas brought it enough to make this work. The Young moment I really liked (and mentioned above) was when they brawled to ringside, and he fishhooked Kingston and said "This is the guy you cheer!?" to the crowd. It tied into the anger he showed in his promo, and in a great moment, Kingston used that break to pop him right under the eye. Kingston's selling throughout the match really makes Young look good. The way Kingston flies into the railing, his facials when Young has him in the modified surfboard, him holding his sides before charging into the corner, those kind of things really made me think Young was giving him a merciless beating, and I cringed every time Young smacked him in the ribs. Kingston brings some mean shots throughout this, I loved his mixed up punches to the head, the headbutts up top, his wild dive to the side of the ring with hardly any room. He set up a lot of Young's stuff real well, making it look like he wasn't just hanging out waiting for Young to hit something. Just a real nice match.


2015 MOTY MASTER LIST

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EVOLVE 9 Road Report

One of the advantages of making your own work schedule is that you can do crazy shit like take a bus to NYC for a Tuesday wrestling show. Didn't want to miss Finlay back in the ring especially against a guy like Sami who will take a Finlay sized beating and fire back. Met my buddy Anthony at Penn Station and headed down to the show. BB Kings is a weird venue for wrestling, maybe the only wrestling arena in the world with bathroom attendants. Those guys were lucky to walk with $10 this night

Stockade/Apollyon v. Ryan Rush/MC Kenny Royal

Man was the heel team pretty awesome. They have the goofy wrestling name of "The Order of the Black" and are pro-wrestling as fuck. Two big fat guys with sloppy face paint who smash people with forearms and crowbarish clotheslines. Apollyon had a nice rolling senton and top rope splash, but I may have liked Stockade kicks to the face and forearm to the back even better. Ryan Rush took some big bumps, and the little guys stuck and moved before they got smushed. I would much rather watch indy guys try to approximate Rockers v. Twin Towers then Kobashi v. Misawa. My second favorite match of the night.

Greek God Papadon v. Alex Reynolds v. Kieran

I realized I have way too much background information about Greek God Papadon, I was able to list half a dozen facts about him to Anthony, I need to go to grad school. This was an indy three way, they have a low ceiling on how good they can be, and this didn't scrape that ceiling.

Eric Ryan v. Bobby Beverly

These guys are EVOLVEish guys having an EVOLVish match. 5'6 jacked guys doing indy reversal sections. One guy had a nice tope. Suplexes appear not to hurt them. This goes about five minutes before Kevin Steen comes in and hits a bunch of headrops. For some reason they didn't jump right up and scream when Steen hit them with suplexes. Steen shakes their unconscious hands and tells them "great match" which did make me laugh. He shoots for a bit, threatening to mouth rape Rob Naylor if he interrupts. Bobby Fish comes out and tells him that EVOLVE has rules, and he had better learn to color in the lines. Problem with running this angle, is that EVOLVE runs so sporadically, and is so goofily booked that am not sure they have any actual fans. People go to the show to watch wrestlers they like, but I can't imagine there are actual EVOLVE fans, the way ROH has fans or CZW has fans. When Steen talked about how stupid EVOLVE is, and how he is going to destroy it, folks seemed totally on board with that.

Super Smash Brothers v. Facade/Jason Gory

I usually judge these kind of tag spotfest with an almost Tim Noel mathematical formula. You have to have twice as many cool spots to stupid spots for me to tolerate it. This was right on the cusp of that, but I think it just cleared that bar. I liked Facade and Gory's hug each other quebrada, and Player Dos is pretty athletic and amazingly Canadian looking.

Sugar Dunkerton v. Silas Young

One thing I noticed while watching all of the indy wrestling TV a couple of weeks ago, is that there is a guy working 2011 Pez Whatley in pretty much every promotion out there. I am not sure if Sugar Dunkington is better then the Alabama Ebony Diamond or the Nevada Ebony Diamond, and I know he isn't as good as Dinamic Black, but I enjoy that gimmick. Silas Young is a seedy looking guy with Metal hair and there is a bunch of amusing shit talking in the match. Young worked him over and yelled "This is wrestling not the stupid shit you do." I am not sure if Young is working a "Chikara is retarded" gimmick, but if he is, he will finish way too high on the Segunda Caida 500. Post match Young calls out Johnny Gargano. Gargano comes out and apologizes for pressuring Silas to have a drink, thus causing him to fall off the wagon and go on a bender. Gargano then says he has never drunk alcohol so he doesn't know how it effects you. I am not sure in what world "Straight Edge asshole taunts a recovering addict into relapse" is a babyface gimmick. My attempts to start the Serenity Prayer as a wrestling chant fail. "ACCEPT THE THINGS I CAN NOT CHANGE, CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN"

Pinkie Sanchez v. Lince Dorado

Dorado has a couple of nice armdrags early, but the match really fell apart. Both guys were really dainty with their stuff. EVOLVE is a fed were folks stiff each other, it makes stuff like Sanchez and Dorado were throwing look even worse. Lince tries a shooting star press with the low ceiling and I get worried. Sanchez has been wrestling for a while, but I bet he can't improv as well as Mitch Ryder.

Larry Dallas comes out wearing the same shiny shirt as Lenny Leonard. If your gimmick is a rich guy throwing money around, it looks really bad to be wearing the same Express teal dress shirt as the schlubby T-Rex armed announcer. Also Dallas is way too tall to work as a manager in a fed like EVOLVE. Although to be fair Jimmy Hart would probably be too tall to work as a manager in EVOLVE. Dallas is two inches taller then his bodyguard and five inches taller then his new tag team. He introduces his new team, The Scene, Scott Reed and Caleb Konley. If you are going to have a tag team named "The Scene" they have to look like they belong to the same scene. Doesn't matter what the scene is. Konley and Reed look like they would never hang out if they weren't shoehorned into a makeshit tag team. Reed had a topknot, shitty dojo queen tats and roid belly, Konley looked like a Mormon Missionary.

The Scene v. Up in Smoke

Cheech and Cloudy are always solid, but the Scene were really bland and didn't bring a ton to the match. Cloudy did take some big bumps and a really nice dive. Not much of a match though.

Post match Leonard asks Cheech about the loss and he turns on Cloudy and hits his finisher on him. Now Cheech and Cloudy have been teaming together for like 8 years, they are one of the longest running tag teams in the last two decades. If you are going to break them up shouldn't it mean something? Cheech hitting a goofy GTS variation after a throw away mid card tag to utter crowd indifference is Russo terrible. Is anyone in the world excited about Cheech v. Cloudy? Especially after that wet fart of an angle?

Jon Davis v. Bobby Fish

Steen had been at ringside doing commentary for the last couple of matches. 30 seconds into this match he runs in and forearms Fish causing a DQ. We get a bunch of back and forth on the mike setting up a 3-way. Davis obliterates the ref with a great lariat and says he wants to fight both guys.

Jon Davis v. Bobby Fish v. Kevin Steen

Steen was supposedly at EVOLVE to cut a promo not wrestle, and he kind of wrestled like a guy who didn't show up planning to wrestle. I have liked Fish before, but didn't think he looked good here, his kicks were more flash then substance and he didn't convey the anger he was supposed to have for Steen. I did like Davis, although he wasn't the focus of the match (although he did get the win). Felt like any combination of these guys in a singles match would have been way better.

John Silver v. Tony Nese

I just hated this match. Pretty much a microcosm of all that is wrong with 2011 professional wrestling. One of the things that the death of territories mean is that there aren't way fewer guys making their living on professional wrestling. I am sure most people on this card are wrestling as a hobby. No one wants to play the bit part in community theatre, everyone wants to be Henry Hill. This was the match after intermission, we still had two main events to go, there was no reason for these two guys to go out and try to do some amalgamation of Beniot v. Sasuke and Misawa v. Kobashi. This was about the most bog standard indy showcase match you can imagine, two guys who trained with each other checking off every box on the "This is Awesome" checklist. Missed moves, armdrags, double dropkick, kip up, wait for applause CHECK. Forearm exchange while making intense faces at each other CHECK!! Taking a headrop selling like you are unconscious for a second, only to get up and start hitting moves like nothing happened CHECK, CHECK CHECK CHECK!!! It's like Gabe watched some dreck like Davey Richards v. Eddie Edwards and thought, I could do that with two guys even shorter, that the crowd doesn't know, and stick it in the midcard.This was the Boehner Plan as a wrestling match, it is News of the World hacking dead soldiers cellphones, Amy Winehouse's last shot of dope, the wrestling match Andrers Brevik dreams of when he goes to sleep.

Sami Callihan v. Fit Finlay

This is why I took a bus to NYC and it delivered everything I wanted it to. Finlay was rocking orange and white gear, I am not sure whether that means he has converted to Protestantism, but I would really be into Apostate Finlay vs. soon to be released Mistico. Man does Finlay look like the baddest fucker in the world live, Barrel chest, thick forearms. He looks like a guy who owns a Belfast bar and once split a mouthy British soldiers head open with a pool cue. Sami comes right at him at the bell and he runs directly into the hardest forearm I have ever seen live. I thought that Finlay knocked him out cold, I would have been a little bummed to take a four hour bus ride for a seven second match, but it might have been worth it. The match goes from there with Sami getting in Finlay's face and paying for it. There is a great moment early when he slaps Finlay and Fit responds with a no hands bar fight headbutt. Sami fired back the best he could, he just blistered Finlay with chops to the throat, and hit a couple of big running kicks and his running forearm. Really cool story here with Callihan trying to earn Finlay's respect and Finlay making him earn it by kicking the shit out of him. There was this point where Callihan has Finlay in the corner, Finlay calls for the break and as the ref gets between them Fit kick Sami in the kneecap. Callihan responds by screaming something like "forget the cheapshots, lets go strike for strike and see who is toughest." Finlay responds by cheap shotting him in the knee again which was such a great "fuck your fake puro fighting spirit" moment. Finlay is here to kick ass and cash a check, he doesn't have shit to prove to anyone.

Finish run was perfect, Sami gets him to the floor and goes for his tope, Finlay dismissively walks away leaving Sami to fly throat first into the guard rail. He is fucked, but still sharp enough to trip Finlay when he was trying to get into the ring. Sami goes to the top, but gets swept off taking a big fall into the ring. Finlay hits a Celtic Cross, which Sami kicks out of. He is beaten but still flips Fit off, Finlay hits him with another Celtic Cross for two again. Sami can barely lift his body off the mat, but still flips the double bird to Finlay. At this point Sami looks like Patricia Arquette at the motel room in True Romance. Finlay finally lifts him up and absolutely plants Callihan with his awesome jumping tombstone for the three count. Fuck I had forgotten how beautiful Finlay's tombstone was. Just a great match, which I can't wait to watch again. Callihan has spent much of this year having good matches with chumps, I am glad he got to get in with someone above his level. Finlay is fucking back, which is the most exciting thing in wrestling in 2011, I want to watch every time he steps into a ring.

Post match Finlay gets on the mic and puts over Callihan as one of the toughest guys he has been in the ring with, with a raspy Lawrence Tierney voice which he attributes to Callihan's chops. Anthony and I decide to bail on Chuck Taylor v. Johnny Gargano and go eat some Bon Chon Chicken. It was a one match show for me, and that match totally delivered so no complaints for me. If EVOLVE books a rematch, they sell a ticket to me.

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